Posted on 01/15/2007 8:04:12 AM PST by shrinkermd
The Sixties generation thought everything should be free. But only a few decades later the hippies were selling water at rock festivals for $5 a bottle. But for me the price of “free love” was even higher.
I sacrificed what should have been the best years of my life for the black lie of free love. All the sex I ever had — and I had more than my fair share — far from bringing me the lasting relationship I sought, only made marriage a more distant prospect...
And I am not alone. Count me among the dissatisfied daughters of the sexual revolution, a new counterculture of women who are realising that casual sex is a con and are choosing to remain chaste instead.
I am 37, and like millions of other girls, was born into a world which encouraged young women to explore their sexuality. It was almost presented to us as a feminist act. In the 1960s the future Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown famously asked: Can a woman have sex like a man? Yes, she answered because “like a man, [a woman] is a sexual creature”. Her insight launched a million “100 new sex tricks” features in women’s magazines. And then that sex-loving feminist icon Germaine Greer enthused that “groupies are important because they demystify sex; they accept it as physical, and they aren’t possessive about their conquests”.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
If you were only 37 you missed it.
What a terrific article! Needs to be disseminated through the American press. I wonder who might pick it up.
Catholicism doesn't.
The very first reference I could find on the subject is here:
http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Sep1999/Wiseman.asp
It calls it a mortal sin. As I remember, that's the stuff that gets you to hell, not purgatory.
LOL you got me there. What I meant basically was sex outside marriage, usually (but not necessarily) of the kind where there are many partners. I do NOT mean "but I only had 1 girlfriend at a time" is excluded.
Sex should be confined to marriage most importantly because of the children it can produce. It also has fall-out in the emotional and physical safety of the participants.
As for older people, I still believe they should conform to this standard AS AN EXAMPLE to those perfectly able to conceive of what is right and good.
Otherwise, we could easily justify any kind of marriage as an example of what is OK. Homosexuals marrying justifies homosexual behavior. Extra-marital sex justifies...extra-marital sex. Doesn't matter the fertility of the people involved. Fertile people will have the idea that it's all OK - and hence, ruin some innocent kid's life.
You wrote:
"Ok, let's go around in the circle. Why was it sinful? The fact is, ancient cultures developed religious laws that gave them differential survival over co-existing groups that did not have these rules. Of course, if you believe that it was sinful "because God said so", then you'll need to tell me why it's OK to eat bacon, slurp oysters, or wear shirts that are made of fabric blends."
1) If I believe it is sinful because God said so I need not explain Jewish beliefs of the Mosaic law. Christians, and I am a Christian, believed masturbation was sinful. They believed it was sinful for several reasons: here is a list put together by a group that is disagrees with the conservative Protestant reasons given against masturbation. I post it because it still does a good job of summing up the usual reasons: http://www.religioustolerance.org/masturba6.htm
"I've read a lot about alcohol addiction, too, and I can differentiate between being a drunk, and responsibly enjoying a few beers at home with a baseball game."
That's not what you're doing. If you believe we must act with sexual responsibility then masturbation is actually a violation of that idea.
"Not everyone who masturbates becomes a child molester, or neglects their spouse's needs. While I'm on that subject, a lot of people use masturbation to fill the gap between their needs, and their spouse's lesser need. That's probably a lot better than getting a divorce, especially with children involved, to find someone you're more compatible with (which you might possibly have had an inkling of knowing if you had established a sexual relationship with them before getting married.)"
The fact that people use masturbation, for whatever supposed reason, does not make it right. The fact that people make claims that they use it to keep from doing a greater evil doesn't legitimzie it.
"I've read the rationale behind that opinion. It seems that the only way to get the semen for artificial insemination is either to masturbate, or collect it in a condom. So, it's not the AI that these "traditionally minded" religions have a problem with, its the means of accomplishing it."
Incorrect. It is the AI itself, and not just the collection method, that religious groups oppose. Want proof?
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
2376 Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child's right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses' "right to become a father and a mother only through each other."
2377 Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that "entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children." "Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses' union . . . . Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person."
You wrote:
"We need not waste our time on useless arguments over this sort of stuff."
If it is sin, it is sin. There is no such thing as a useless argument when someone is trying to promote what is right over what is sinful.
I know many Protestants who think birth control is a useless issue. These same people also often think divorce and remarriage is a useless issue -- and Jesus condemns that explicitly. What is happening there is that people are CHOOSING what THEY believe to be important rather than living with a total Christian ethic. Do you think that's what Christ wanted?
I was about to make a point by point disection of your post and answer one at a time. Then I realized as I got about halfway down that you and I are so diametrically opposite in our viewpoint that it will just suffice to say that I disagree with most of your points on a foundational level.
One example: Circumsision is "maiming". So?
That is, indeed, the ideal. Prior to my divorce, my then wife and I decided that three children was enough, and we decided on vasectomy for me. All sexual activity since my divorce from her had zero chance of making babies. Yes, they do reverse themselves, but I had a certified infertility expert do mine, he knew what he was doing.
We'll just have to disagree with the meaning of sex in this time and place. As long as we are both free to live our beliefs, its no problem.
You wrote:
"How is it a sin? That's ridiculous."
No, it is not ridiculous, and every Christian leader who ever wrote about it believed it was sinful until just a few decades ago.
I just posted this a few minutes ago. It does not agree with the views of the Protestants expressed in it, but it is a good summary:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/masturba6.htm
"The Church of Christ thinks it is wrong to have musical instruments in church even though the Bible is VERY silent on the subject."
Very interesting and a case in point as to how a secular circumstance can become a religious proscription.
I was told by a Church of Christ Minister that after the Civil War the church just did not have the money to buy instruments and so they did without. Over time, this became the "Way things are done" and many of the older people of this church are convinced that instruments ARE the work of the devil.
At what point, though, should these moral failings or sins become something the state becomes concered over? Many want Abortion made illegal by the state. How for do we go? Does "Fornication", masturbation, birth control, homeseuxality, etc fall under those sins that are 'great enough' to become illegal in the eyes of the state, as well as a church? Not a flame, just trying to guage the feelings of those who feel we have become a 'nation of sin'.
Well thanks, but I disagree about FR (although it wasn't intended just as FR, but as a microcosm).
As in real life too, men "bash" women and it is NOT simply a reaction to crazy feminism. They complain a lot, and make fun of things "typical" of women, and brag about why men are so great.
Yes, men are taking alot of garbage on TV and all that now (being the dummies, or jerks, or whatever), but that apparently hasn't changed all the real men in the real world. No, they're not dummies, but they're not all truly respectful of women as a whole, either. And it wouldn't matter whether they had spent a generation being "hen-pecked" in the media. Alot of men are seeming the same as their grandfathers allegedly were "back in the old days".
Societies change attitudes on things all the time. In my grandparents' day, it was almost unthinkable to marry outside of one's European ethnic group. In my parents' time, it was almost unthinkable to marry outside your religion (and I mean the exact sect). Forty years ago, it was illegal to marry outside your race in a handful of states.
I think it may well take less than forty years before attitudes change on gay marriage, as well. There are parts about the coming world that will annoy many people who are living today, but that's not going to stop them from happening.
If she was once what you call a "slut" --- promiscuous, lonely, loose and lost, spiritually confused --- she is now a new creature, and it's a whole new ballgame.
There is rejoicing in heaven over this Prodigal Daughter. Read her stuff: I tell you, she shines.
A Democrat is a Republican who hasn't been mugged yet. In a similar way, this woman is shifting her stance toward the right as she learns about life.
Sorry, not a physics major. Perhaps it was a bad example.
But it doesn't at your link call it a mortal sin.
It says "an act of masturbation in itself is serious matter for sin. Any mortal sin requires two other elements . . ."
They are "sufficient freedom (willfulness and consent) and knowledge or awareness"
It cites "anger or passion" and "obsession or compulsion" as mitagating circumstance.
IOW, most acts of masturbation would not be mortal sins.
That's not at all uncommon on threads dealing with morality.
I guess it's a function of having too much time on my hands today. No, I'm not a Federal worker, I always have Mondays off, but it's way too cold to go outside and do anything today. It's been a while since I've had a good long, rousing discussion on a single topic with a bunch of fellow FReepers, and I found it stimulating.
I don't know why, because she isn't doing anything that is going to hurt anyone, even herself. She doesn't deserve the veiled epithets, and, may I say, "judgements".
Like I've said, she has every right to live that lifestyle, and to talk about it, either with people in person, in interviews on the Internet, or by writing a book. But by engaging in the latter two behaviors, the topic is a legitimate source of discussion as to alternatives. She's in effect, recommending one course of action to her readers, and I'm pointing out that there are other alternatives.
You wrote:
"At what point, though, should these moral failings or sins become something the state becomes concered over? Many want Abortion made illegal by the state. How for do we go?"
Abortion murders the innocent. It should be outlawed.
"Does "Fornication", masturbation, birth control, homeseuxality, etc fall under those sins that are 'great enough' to become illegal in the eyes of the state, as well as a church?"
Your premise is faulty. What you listed are offenses against God and therefore automatically opposed by the Church. Some states have banned all of those things at one time or another. Society DID NOT SUFFER AS A RESULT. I am not calling for these things to be made illegal once again, however. In any case the Church opposes them. That seems to be the greater issue.
"Not a flame, just trying to guage the feelings of those who feel we have become a 'nation of sin'."
Weren't we always a nation of sin? And haven't these sins always existed here even if not in such profusion?
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